The sudden collapse of liberalism

In 2016, Trump supporters took over the GodlikeProductions.com message board. The mood turned grim, much as it had fifteen years earlier, when Fortuyn fans flooded the IEX message board. It was like being thrown back 15 years to 2001. This time, I stayed as I had missed something important. Given my possible future job, not understanding fascism was no excuse. I familiarised myself with the MAGA crowd, as I had done with the Moroccan minority in the Netherlands. Hanging out with people helps you to understand them. And it served as a reality check. Living together with people of different cultures comes with issues, some of them serious. If you look at it through the lens of the Hegelian dialectic, you can see multiculturalism as the thesis, the revival of fascism as the antithesis, and a brutal truth exercise as the synthesis, which might become the basis of the global social contract. GodlikeProductions.com had the annoying feature of banning you for no apparent reason, only to let you back in after some time. It made me switch to Reddit, where you can hang out with other groups as well, like a fly on the wall.

That made me switch to Reddit, where you can hang out with other groups as well, like a fly on the wall. Flies on walls like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel can arrive at great insights. Hegel had somehow figured out how history would unfold over the next 200 years and how we would arrive in Paradise through a struggle between ideas that would lead to social progress. Hegel guessed it by observing what happened around him, looking back at history, and reasoning from there. In hindsight, he was one of the greatest prophets of all time. It now appears that 200 years of social progress have come to an end, and it may be up to me to figure out what to do next, outline a global society for the future, and chart the path towards it. If God is willing, that is possible. As a former liberal, I may have issues with MAGA as I had with the Moroccan minority, but people have reasons for their beliefs and actions, and I am not always right, but I aim to be. The first Trump presidency was not a clean break with the past, as his cabinet featured several Republican establishment figures. They kept The Donald in check.

The second Trump administration became a different ballgame. Trump went unhinged after he had surrounded himself with sycophants. As there is no limit to Trump’s ego, his erratic and spiteful caprices became a spectacle so hilarious that even Monty Python couldn’t have made it up, with Trump naming buildings after himself, declaring his birthday a public holiday, and numerous other self-aggrandising acts such as building a giant Arc de Trump. As he overreacted to events, it was hard to see a plan behind his actions, prompting his followers to praise his brilliance for keeping his plans secret and taking his opponents off guard. His economic policies were like raising tariffs on Swiss imports because he didn’t like the way the Swiss leader spoke to him. And let’s not forget his brazen lies, his self-enrichment and that of his family members by abusing his office, eclipsing all previous corruption by US presidents, his pardoning of criminals, and his divisive Christmas message, ‘Merry Christmas to all, including the radical left scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our country, but are failing badly.’

Also noteworthy were Trump’s war threats against Denmark, for, among other reasons, not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, which he blamed on Norway. Add to that his going to war with Iran. At the same time, negotiations were still ongoing for enriching uranium after he had torpedoed the nuclear agreement with Iran because Bibi Netanyahu told him it was a bad deal for Israel. When Iran kept resisting and blocked oil exports from neighbouring countries, he asked for European help after having been hostile to Europe, which included threatening to invade Danish territory, pressing Ukraine to surrender territory to Russia, and making Europe pay for the American weapons sent to Ukraine. As Europe did little to help him in his war efforts in Iran, Trump revived his idea of leaving NATO, while leaving the rest of the world to pay for the disaster that war caused. Meanwhile, Mr Trump was already eying an invasion of Cuba. As a Swedish newspaper put it, ‘This is the problem with having a giant baby in charge of the free world.’

No doubt that the second Trump administration will go down in history as the greatest joke in the history of government, and that it will be remembered as a lasting monument of God’s sense of humour. And it may herald a new era, the one his supporters hoped would come if they elected him. The name Trump means trumpeteer, which is noteworthy as the loud noise of trumpets would herald the end times. MAGA defiled Jesus’ legacy more than any other blasphemers ever did, including Monty Python. Trump sold his followers $3 made-in-China Trump Bibles for $60, which was one of his schemes to cash in on his presidency at his followers’ expense. After the Pope criticised Trump for threatening to wipe out an entire civilisation, Trump lashed out at the Pope and then posted on social media an image portraying himself as Christ healing the sick. Also, on the GodlikeProductions.com message board, I was cautious about expressing my opinions. The mood among conservatives changed, and three groups emerged: those who regretted voting for Trump, those who saw Trump as a failure but believed the alternative was worse, and those who still backed Trump, the main reason being that he halted the flood of immigrants.

By 1 January 2025, it was clear that the second Trump administration would be different from the first. Trump had ousted the people who might rein him in, so that his erratic conduct could destabilise the world. The world adapted, but with no one to check the orange madman, things could easily spiral out of control. MAGA may be a clown show like the related fascist parties in the Netherlands, but their success comes from the failure of the liberal order. The new fascism may be a quick collapse, but the alternative could be a slow death. A crisis could prompt us to act, while a gradual deterioration could keep us passive. My preparations were not yet complete, but seemed good enough had the time come, and close to the finish line, the moment when additional preparation would make little sense. I figured it would be around 1 April 2027. I further surmised that the job would start before Trump’s second term ended. My new deadline became 1 January 2029. I promised myself to stop by then if nothing had come out of it, but would I? So, is this going somewhere, or would I be setting deadlines until the Grim Reaper arrives?

Things will not return to what they were before. The liberal world order has ended. Liberal states have long had an edge because of capitalism and science. When the Soviet Union collapsed, liberalism seemed to have won. Yet, it is better to say that our consumption addiction has won. The communists had given up on their project because they had promised their workers more stuff, while everyone knew that workers in capitalist countries had more stuff. The modern consumer is not much unlike a drug addict busy committing suicide by overdosing, wanting his dealer to bring on more. He has no survival skills and is hooked on a system he can’t survive without. The merchants of death, selling us that merchandise, are like drug dealers selling opioids. Liberalism was yet another fairy tale. It has just collapsed in front of us, but liberals have yet to catch on.

We are at a turning point in history. A pillar of Western civilisation, social progress, is collapsing. That is due not only to migration but also to ecological destruction, resource depletion, the replacement of humans by artificial intelligence, and the threat of World War III. The threat is complex, and we like to think in terms of good and evil. We have reached the limits of human nature. Civilisation is just a thin veneer to keep the beast within us in check. Liberalism was an attempt to achieve a good society through a social contract, giving all groups in society a suitable place based on the idea of a fundamental equality of all individuals. With the arrival of people from illiberal and disorganised areas, maintaining the liberal order became increasingly difficult. That is why fear is on the rise, the beast in us awakes, order collapses, the rule of law begins to look like a luxury we can’t afford, and gangsters like Donald Trump take over. Time is drawing close. The balls are falling to the ground. We are at the end of Hegel’s ride. We may either see the end of civilisation or the completion of our journey to Paradise, but the latter only happens in fairy tales.

Mediocre vision

Humanity’s lack of collective intelligence sets the bar for a world leader rather low. Someone with mediocre vision will already do better, provided this individual has unlimited authority like a messiah. And that is the point of having a messiah. If you happen to be that person, for some particular reason only God knows, and you can only guess with your limited wits, you must do what you think is best, regardless of what others think, because God appointed you, and what needs to be done requires trampling on the rights people believe they have. You must avoid errors, as your mistakes can have dire consequences. And if that fails, you have to depend on God to make things turn out all right, if needed by some miraculous turn of events. For the job that may await me, I needed answers, and so I tried. That is where I stand now, with several answers and still questions.

Let’s start with a warning. It is the truth as I see it, but it might be the truth that can save you. It is no accident that I live in the Netherlands, the most progressive country on issues like dealing with the limits of growth, LGBTQ rights, animal welfare, balancing work and private life, opportunities for ethnic minorities, and the right to decide to terminate one’s own life. The Dutch culture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries formed me, just as first-century Jewish culture shaped Jesus. Social progress has reached the end of the line. We face fundamental disagreements about the direction we should take, leading to an authority crisis and a moral crisis. As Judgement Day could be approaching, it seems not a coincidence that the International Court of Justice is in The Hague, the Netherlands.

If the world is to become one society, it will be multicultural, but people from different cultures may live separately. As cultural differences cause trouble. Yet we should picture what the future requires of us and define what constitutes acceptable conduct and what does not. And cultural problems can be fixed. To illustrate the point, the Danes descend from the raping and pillaging Vikings. Yet, we must deal with the people who don’t fit in. Multicultural societies work best when the state is more powerful than the tribes living within it, and when everyone shares the idea of a common destiny. The problem is not only with people from cultures who have trouble integrating into modern societies, but also the suicidal nature of modern culture, which is ‘creatively destroying’ itself in the pursuit of money. Only a brutal truth exercise that spares no one can save us now. I know first-hand that it can be excruciating. Coming from a family of farmers, I am not afraid of shit. These are shitty issues, and you can’t fix them without getting your hands dirty.

Make America Go Apeshit

If you are a liberal living in Europe, you may think that a large swath of Americans is pretty crazy. That is because they believe very different myths. A 2013 poll indicated 26% of Americans believed that Obama is the Antichrist or might be.¹ Most of these people later voted for Trump. Racism plays a role here, but it is not the entire story by any means. The introduction of public healthcare insurance has infuriated conservatives. Some believe that public healthcare is a communist scheme promoted by a Satanic influence. Countries with public healthcare provide better healthcare at lower costs. Some claimed he was Muslim. Barack Obama once gave the following Easter message, ‘Michelle and I wish you a joyful holiday filled with the enduring power of faith and hope.’ And Donald Trump, ‘Open the fucking strait you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell. Praise be to Allah.’ How people came to think that Obama is an evil genius, and a Muslim, while the Allah-praising Donald Trump is the best possible choice for Christians, remains a mystery for people who don’t know American culture.

The hatred of progressive presidents has a long history. John F. Kennedy faced the John Birch Society’s Wanted for Treason campaign. The John Birch Society had found that Kennedy was a communist and that communists had infiltrated the highest ranks of the US government, and were conspiring to create a totalitarian one-world government run by communists. The supposed proof for that was the US administration’s attempt to prevent the spread of John Birch Society propaganda, which seemed like dangerous extremism to government bureaucrats, but violated the freedom of speech. To American conservatives, the expansion of government, government meddling, or international cooperation like the United Nations smells like communism. These things run counter to their ideal of self-determination. And communists oppose and repress religion, so it is Satan’s work as well, in their view at least. That goes a long way in explaining these sentiments.

If he had them, Kennedy did an excellent job of hiding his communist sympathies. After, like a true puppet of the Military Industrial Complex, having grilled his opponent, Eisenhower, during the election campaign for neglecting America’s defences, making Eisenhower warn of the influence of the Military Industrial Complex at his farewell speech, he risked World War III with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Those geniuses at the John Birch Society saw through all that and found Eisenhower to be an even more dangerous radical leftist lunatic extremist. While conspiracy theorists, with their eyeballs glued to their computer screens, were busy analysing every move by every secret society and imagining countless others, the John Birch Society has taken over the United States, with a little help from Russia’s secret services, by making people believe these conspiracy theories. If that was the plot to destroy America, it has succeeded marvellously.

By now, large groups of liberals and conservatives hate each other’s guts. To illustrate the point, there is a post I made on Reddit on 31 December 2025. Someone reposted a RealDonaldTrump social media post headlined ‘Windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles!’ It featured a photograph of a dead bird, not a bald eagle, near a windmill in Israel, so not the United States. I reacted jokingly, ‘At least, Donald Trump was real.’ These were unmistakably his words, and he posted them under the name RealDonaldTrump. That was the gist of the joke. The post wasn’t offensive, or at least by any reasonable standard, yet it became one of the most downvoted I’ve ever written on Reddit. Praising or bashing Trump may draw ire, but this? It is hard to guess whether Trump haters or Trump lovers did it, but there is something wrong with the sense of humour of those who found it offensive. At least, most people see that the system is broken and that existing solutions fail. Yet, if there were a solution, few would accept it willingly.

Conspiracy thinking is more widespread in the United States than in the Netherlands. Acquaintances of mine who have regularly visited the United States and have spoken to Americans confirmed it. I could see it for myself on message boards. The conspiracy theories range from aliens, faked moon landings, who killed Kennedy, 9/11, vaccinations, Jews running the world, and the elites being a network of paedophiles. The Epstein files give us an insight into how the elites are interconnected and engaged in various questionable dealings, of which abusing underage girls is only one, and most of those visiting these parties probably had no knowledge of that.

Conspiracy theories often relate to the facts, but if you investigate them, much would be unproven, inaccurate or wrong. Conspiracy theorists don’t mind. Pizzagate may be a fabrication, but they claim the Epstein files prove it. That kind of logic appals the fact-checkers, but if you call conspiracy theories hunches rather than facts, they make more sense. Humans are political animals. They scheme all the time. We gossip and fabricate stories to hurt our opponents, so Pizzagate itself is also a conspiracy. We don’t know what’s going on, so getting the direction right is already a success. Yet, the conspiracy theorists aren’t paranoid enough because these secret dealings, as well as conspiracy theories, seem part of the ultimate psyop: God’s scheme to undermine trust in US society to make America go insane and ready for the messiah. It made me think that MAGA stands for ‘Make America Go Apeshit’.

Culture: selling versus convincing

Corruption in the United States is a cultural issue, not just a political one. It fits the American tradition of moral pragmatism, in contrast to Europe’s idealism. A bit of corruption greases the wheels of industry. There are more corrupt countries than the United States, so the comparison is with North-West Europe. You convince Europeans, but sell to Americans. The difference is not just in the wording. It reflects a cultural divide. I have heard Brits use the phrase, but in a negative sense, meaning getting scammed. It is more common in the United States, where it has a more neutral meaning of becoming convinced. The United States is a nation of salespeople. If an American likes your argument, he buys it as if it were a product. It is a different idea of truth, and a corrupt one. It sheds some light on why religion and climate change denial are more widespread in the United States than in Western Europe. It is part of the American success story. Money is power, and bullshit sells, as we are religious beings who need myths to believe in.

You may not buy the science of climate change because you don’t like taking public transport or eating less meat. And so, you buy into climate change denial. That makes you morally corrupt, but no problem, you can buy the story that Jesus died for your sins, and believing that will get you into heaven. That Jesus died for our sins is pretty unbelievable, and if you had been honest and truthful, you would have questioned your faith, which Western Europeans do more than Americans. Many Americans now genuinely believe that climate change is a hoax made up by governments to raise taxes, but that is because they believe what they want to believe, not because it is the truth.

Moral corruption affects some denominations of Protestantism, most notably Evangelicalism. History and culture go a long way in explaining that. Catholic doctrine holds that faith and good works can save you. Catholics can perform good works, such as giving money to the Church, to atone for their sins. That promoted corruption within the Catholic Church through the sale of indulgences. Protestants objected to this moral corruption and took moral integrity very seriously. They made morality a matter of personal choice. Catholics are more morally flexible, so Catholic countries in Europe tend to be more corrupt than Protestant ones. Protestants should think for themselves, while Catholics merely follow the Church’s lead.

And so, despite the presence of a sizeable Roman Catholic minority, the moral conflict defining Dutch culture, the vicar versus the merchant, is ‘dominee versus koopman’ rather than ‘pastoor versus koopman.’ It was the Protestant vicar, not the Roman Catholic priest, who objected to the merchant’s wicked deeds. The merchant was also a Protestant. This dualism still profoundly affects the Dutch, making the Netherlands a nation of merchants and vicars. For a vicar, money can never be the highest good, while successful merchants are morally depraved, as greed drives them. The merchant usually prevailed, so the Netherlands became the wealthiest nation before the Industrial Revolution started.

Roman Catholics didn’t suffer from that kind of gut-wrenching ethical dualism. It made Protestants seem sanctimonious and sneaky to them. They would take the moral high ground and lecture Catholics on trivial matters of the scripture while acting as greedy merchants. That is also a caricature. Many Protestants take ethical matters very seriously. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have had idealists like Kant and Hegel seeking absolute truth and absolute morality, which would eventually make people question the Bible itself, as it is a historical document from a particular culture. And this ethical culture also affected Roman Catholics in the Netherlands, making the Dutch Catholics against Rome after the Church reversed progressive reforms and turning the 1985 Pope visit to the Netherlands into an epic disaster. There is a profound difference between most Protestant vicars, also in the United States, and televangelists, who are the personification of America’s religious corruption. So, what is the origin of the Protestant moral corruption?

The Protestant doctrine also holds that faith alone suffices. And Protestants take the scriptures more seriously than Roman Catholics, which opened the door to a different form of moral corruption, more prevalent in the United States. What the Bible says is right and wrong is not always objectively so. Paul condemned homosexual acts in no uncertain terms. We don’t know Jesus’ opinion on this matter, but he said not to judge and that he who is without sin should cast the first stone.

Yet, there is no objective moral reason to condemn gays and lesbians or deny them the right to marry. It became a problematic issue among Protestants, who take both scripture and moral conscience seriously. When you follow the scriptures on this matter, you shut down your moral conscience and cause harm. And if only faith can save you, you don’t have to do good works to compensate for your misdeeds. That is evil. Catholics merely followed the Church’s lead, and Catholics must do good works to compensate for their sins, so that gets them off the hook.

This morally perverse Protestantism didn’t prevail in North-West Europe. Many of the least corrupt countries are there, while LGBTQ rights in these countries remain uncontested. Meanwhile, Catholic priests lived the good life, which the Dutch call ‘het Roomse leven’ or the Burgundian lifestyle. Jews, as Karl Marx observed, are amoral merchants, and this, rather than racism or religious bigotry, stands at the root of today’s anti-Semitism. Jews are often the merchants and usurers who buy the American politicians. It makes moral corruption in the United States a sensitive issue, most notably because anti-Semitism has led to the Holocaust. Now we are at the bottom of the manure pit.

Idealism and realism

A society has rules, but to arrive at a good society, you need social trust. Social trust means that you can trust strangers, and everyone knows. There are always people trying to take advantage of others, but when there are few of them, most people keep their end of the bargain, and social trust is high. If you believe that others are as trustworthy as you are, and you are trustworthy, you are more willing to contribute to the common good. Yet, if we believe that others are only interested in the best deal for themselves or are untrustworthy, we are more likely to assume the same attitude, so that degenerate morals become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A system of rewards and punishments can help to make people obey the rules and keep the group focused on the common good. It is why we have prisons and fines. As we are nearing an apocalypse, we face a global collective action problem. We can only save humanity if we do it together.

That is why we may be incredibly lucky to be simulations, with God controlling the script. Otherwise, we wouldn’t stand a chance. Even when most people are good, the outcome is terrible, driving us toward the apocalypse. Only one of the disciples betrayed Jesus. That already proved fatal. Judas must have seen for himself that Jesus was the messiah and had witnessed God’s power, but even then, he betrayed Jesus, either out of patriotism or greed. He may have hoped that Jesus would oust the Romans to establish a Jewish state, and grew disillusioned, or the lure of money proved stronger than his fear of God. Most Christians talk about Jesus, but are after the money, or they think their tribe is superior. Only one Indian patriot sufficed to murder Mahatma Gandhi. Since then, India and Pakistan have been one step away from a great patriotic war with nukes. So, without God controlling the script, being a messiah is a losing proposition of 100% certainty, not worth entertaining for any rational individual.

Muslims are no better. Money also turns their religion into a hollow custom. Most of them are poor, but where the oil money flows, the rich flaunt their excessive lifestyles, outdoing the excessive consumption in places like the United States, while leaving their less fortunate Muslim brothers to toil in misery. A few generously donate money to religious charities helping the poor or funding nutters who blow up things and randomly murder people in the name of Islam. They are, however, more interested in building the largest skyscrapers. And Jews? We don’t even have to discuss the Jews. So, what about the Dutch? Yeah, what about whataboutisms? It takes one to know one. So, if economic growth and competition are the problem, trade is the problem, and if that is what brings us down, trade is the greatest of all evils.

It doesn’t mean most merchants are evil. It is the system we work in. How to deal with that problem comes next, but solving it begins with acknowledging the true cause. It seems we can’t do without trade and money, so the odds of religion defeating money in a realistic scenario are zero at best. There is enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. The privileged never have enough. And those who have the money decide what happens. Greed will prevail unless brute force ends it. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to that task. The salespeople are just too cheeky. You must be willing to murder billions of people and have the means to do so, like God, to frighten us to the point that we stop listening to the merchants.

Moral pragmatism is getting by and hoping that God will save the day. Moral idealism is not waiting for God and trying to create Paradise on Earth. A sizeable group of Christians holds the latter view, but also atheist progressives, ranging from communists to liberals. The cynical view is more prevalent among conservatives. Whether we try to prevent it or not, human nature makes the apocalypse a done deal. As Christianity points out, we are all sinners and need a saviour. Human nature is so depraved that a messiah wouldn’t be enough. God needs to control the script. That is indeed the case, so we can try to leave our cynicism behind and care for others and nature, while understanding that everything is interconnected do that our actions affect others and nature, and that transgressions like usury that disturb the balance in Paradise are the most heinous crimes.

Muslims are no better. Money also turns their religion into a hollow custom. Most of them are poor, but where the oil money flows, the rich flaunt their excessive lifestyles, outdoing the excessive consumption in places like the United States, while leaving their less fortunate Muslim brothers to toil in misery. A few generously donate money to religious charities helping the poor or funding nutters who blow up things and randomly murder people in the name of Islam. They are, however, more interested in building the largest skyscrapers. And Jews? We don’t even have to discuss the Jews. So, what about the Dutch? Yeah, what about whataboutisms? It takes one to know one. So, if economic growth and competition are the problem, trade is the problem, and if that is what brings us down, trade is the greatest of all evils.

It doesn’t mean most merchants are evil. It is the system we work in. How to deal with that problem comes next, but solving it begins with acknowledging the true cause. It seems we can’t do without trade and money, so the odds of religion defeating money in a realistic scenario are zero at best. There is enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. The privileged never have enough. And those who have the money decide what happens. Greed will prevail unless brute force ends it. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to that task. The salespeople are just too cheeky. You must be willing to murder billions of people and have the means to do so, like God, to frighten us to the point that we stop listening to the merchants.

Moral pragmatism is getting by and hoping that God will save the day. Moral idealism is not waiting for God and trying to create Paradise on Earth. A sizeable group of Christians holds the latter view, but also atheist progressives, ranging from communists to liberals. The cynical view is more prevalent among conservatives. Whether we try to prevent it or not, human nature makes the apocalypse a done deal. As Christianity points out, we are all sinners and need a saviour. Human nature is so depraved that a messiah wouldn’t be enough. God needs to control the script. That is indeed the case, so we can try to leave our cynicism behind and care for others and nature, while understanding that everything is interconnected do that our actions affect others and nature, and that transgressions like usury that disturb the balance in Paradise are the most heinous crimes.

The pragmatic view is that trade, finance, and money are invincible until God intervenes. And that is correct. It has built the European empires, ranging from the Spanish to the Dutch and the British. And it has made America strong. There may be more graft in the United States than in Western Europe, but most countries are more corrupt than the United States. And the Hegelian dialectic is the way God sees social progress. The West has progressed the furthest on that path and must lead the way. My reason for focusing on the United States is not only that America has become an evil empire and the world’s gravest problem, but also that Americans are more pragmatic, get things done, and, above all, are the most eager to receive the messiah.

Europeans lack their pragmatic attitude and religious fervour. And so, the coming world revolution will probably start there. Compromising with the old, corrupt order is a dead end. We need a spiritual rebirth and must break away from the system run by merchants and usurers, and ground our society in ethical principles and make humankind part of nature rather than above it. Europe will probably be next, and the rest of the world will follow. So, don’t worry about the Muslims. They fear God and also expect Jesus to return. And don’t worry about the Chinese. It is their state’s official goal to run the Hegelian dialectic to its completion and abandon the market economy once the workers’ paradise arrives. That is my guess for now. Things hardly ever go the way I foresee. Yet, they go precisely according to God’s plan.

As for the question I asked myself as a teenager, ‘Is it possible that communists had good intentions?’ If you know how deep the problem runs, you can only appreciate their effort. If there is no God, we, the little people, are on our own, against the superior force of money and tribalism, and there is no chance at all that we will succeed. The elites will play us out by sowing divisions with religious and nationalist fairy tales. They make others toil for them so they get rich without working, and it will end in destruction, albeit creative destruction, economists tell us, so that our suicide will go down in memory as a form of concept art. The elites fund think tanks that tell us fairy tales about individual freedom, so that we will not question the order in which they are our masters, and we are their serfs. And we, the gullible people, need myths to believe in. The communists faced that brutal truth and tried to stamp out nationalism and religion. Maybe for that reason, they named their newspapers ‘The Truth’. Only, communism doesn’t change human nature, so new class societies arose in communist societies with elites and perks.

If this happens, you will have to deal with the consequences. Central planning of every detail doesn’t work. If we try that, it will become a disaster 100 times worse than the Great Leap Forward. Software engineers who have learned from their mistakes design, build, test, start small to see if it works, correct errors, scale up, and fix bugs until the system operates smoothly. That is, unless changes are required. Then, you have to do it all over again. And small changes can have a dramatic, unexpected impact. It is why the absence of further changes is the single most crucial success factor in this endeavour to build a world society for the coming 1,000 years. Future generations will have to resist pressures to make improvements if things were okay to begin with. Things were okay in Eden, and all that happened since then made matters worse.

Kicking off the revolution

A society has rules, but to arrive at a good society, you need social trust. Social trust means that you can trust strangers, and everyone knows. There are always people trying to take advantage of others, but when there are few of them, most people keep their end of the bargain, and social trust is high. If you believe that others are as trustworthy as you are, and you are trustworthy, you are more willing to contribute to the common good. Yet, if we believe that others are only interested in the best deal for themselves or are untrustworthy, we are more likely to assume the same attitude, so that degenerate morals become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A system of rewards and punishments can help to make people obey the rules and keep the group focused on the common good. It is why we have prisons and fines. As we are nearing an apocalypse, we face a global collective action problem. We can only save humanity if we do it together.

That is why we may be incredibly lucky to be simulations, with God controlling the script. Otherwise, there is no chance of success. Even when most people are good, the outcome is terrible, because in competition, the most unscrupulous win out. Only one of the disciples betrayed Jesus. That already proved fatal. Judas must have witnessed God’s power, yet he still betrayed Jesus, either out of patriotism or greed. He may have hoped that Jesus would oust the Romans to establish a Jewish state, and grew disillusioned, or the lure of money proved stronger than his fear of God. And only one Indian patriot sufficed to murder Mahatma Gandhi. Since then, India and Pakistan have been one step away from a great patriotic war with nukes. Without God controlling the script, being a messiah is a losing proposition, not worth entertaining for rational individuals.

Muslims are no better. Money turns their religion into a hollow custom. Most Muslims are poor, but where the oil money flows, the rich flaunt their excessive lifestyles, leaving their less fortunate Muslim brothers to toil in misery. A few might generously donate money to religious charities helping the poor or funding nutters who blow up things and randomly murder people in the name of God. Yet, they are more interested in building the largest skyscrapers. And Jews? We don’t even have to discuss the Jews. So, what about the Dutch? Yeah, what about whataboutisms? It takes one to know one. So, if economic growth and competition are the problem, trade is the problem, and if that is what brings us down, trade is the greatest of all evils.

It doesn’t mean merchants are evil people. Many are not. It is the system we work in. How to deal with that problem comes next, but solving it begins with acknowledging the true cause. It seems we can’t do without trade and money, so the odds of religion defeating money in a realistic scenario are zero at best. There is enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. The privileged never have enough. And those who have the money decide what happens. Greed will prevail unless brute force ends it. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to that task. The salespeople are just too cheeky. You must be willing to murder billions of people and have the means to do so, like God, to frighten us to the point that we stop listening to the merchants.

Moral pragmatism is getting by and hoping that God will save the day. Moral idealism is not waiting for God and trying to create Paradise on Earth. A sizeable group of Christians holds the latter view, but also atheist progressives, ranging from communists to liberals. The cynical view is more prevalent among conservatives. Whether we try to make the world a better place or not, human nature makes the apocalypse a done deal. As Christianity points out, we are all sinners and need a saviour. We must leave our cynicism behind and care about other people and nature, while understanding that everything is interconnected, so that our actions affect others and nature, and that transgressions that disturb the balance in Paradise are the most heinous crimes.

As Hegelian dialectic is the way God sees social progress, and the West has progressed the furthest on that path, the West must lead the way. My reason for focusing on the United States is not only that America has become an evil empire and the world’s gravest problem, but also that Americans are more pragmatic, get things done, and are the most eager to receive the messiah. Many are literally begging for the Second Coming and are willing to perform the craziest acts to make it happen. Now, I am not going to criticise it, for only God can save us and God wrote the script.

It makes the United States the best place to start the coming world revolution. Europeans lack the religious fervour, but also the pragmatic attitude of Americans. Compromising with the old, corrupt order is a dead end. We need a spiritual rebirth and must break away from the system run by merchants and usurers, and ground our society in ethical principles and make humankind part of nature rather than above it. Europe will probably be next, and the rest of the world will follow. That is my guess for now. Things hardly ever go the way I foresee. Yet, they go precisely according to God’s plan.

As for the question I asked myself as a teenager, ‘Is it possible that communists had good intentions?’ If you know how deep the problem runs, you can only appreciate their effort. If there is no God, we, the little people, are on our own, against the superior force of money and tribalism, and there is no chance at all that we will succeed. The elites will play us out by sowing divisions with religious and nationalist fairy tales. They make others toil for them so they get rich without working, and it will end in destruction, albeit creative destruction, economists tell us, so that our suicide will go down in memory as a form of concept art.

The elites fund think tanks that tell us fairy tales about individual freedom and make us fear collectivism, so that we will not unite and overturn the order in which they are our masters, and we are their serfs. And we, the gullible people, need myths to believe in. The communists faced that brutal truth and tried to stamp out nationalism and religion. Maybe for that reason, they named their newspapers ‘The Truth’. Only, communism doesn’t change human nature, so their economic system performed poorly while a new class society with an elite of party bureaucrats arose.

Kicking off a revolution

Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ You can save yourself by following me, accepting that what I say is the truth, and that is how you survive. We need a fairy tale and a leader to believe in who tells us what the truth is. That is how we can save ourselves. Otherwise, we will continue to fight over our fair tales and not do what we must. The idea of being the messiah is an uneasy predicament for any sensible person. It also made me question my views. I have been proven wrong countless times. Progress comes from being proven wrong and learning from it. Minor oversights can have dramatic consequences. Preventing mistakes is better than correcting them afterwards. And correcting them sooner is better than correcting them later. Changes in society and its institutions have unexpected consequences. Still, God wrote the script, so we can only do our best, like Boy Scouts, and expect God to do the rest, like an Akela.

Many, perhaps most, US politicians are corrupt, but Donald Trump is Mr Graft himself. Between 2024 and 2026, his net worth nearly tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.5 billion, thereby outdoing the most brazen grifters in US politics. Unlike ordinary politicians who accept bribes to finance their campaigns, Trump and his entourage exploit the office for personal gain.² It seems to include insider trading preceding Trump’s social media posts.³ So much for draining the swamp and ridding US politics of corruption. By his own admission, Trump is a pussy grabber who would ‘do’ his daughter had she not been his daughter. At least 26 women have accused him of sexual misconduct.⁴

The United States today resembles France before the French Revolution. The system is broken. Reform is impossible. Cleaning the slate is all that remains. Dutch television once aired a fragment, probably because it was hilarious, of a preacher standing in front of Donald Trump, with Trump putting up his best sanctimonious face. The preacher thanked Trump for ‘saving America from Satan.’ Then my wife, Ingrid, said, ‘Look! There you have him! That’s Satan!’ She meant Donald Trump. She was joking, but that joke can only be funny if there is some truth to it.

My wife doesn’t dislike Trump and tends to look on the bright side of what he is doing. Forcing Ukraine to accept a bad deal? That’s fine with her if it stops the killing. Taking out Maduro? Things were bad in Venezuela already. And he ended the Gaza war. Invading Greenland? She didn’t express an opinion. Bombing Iran back to the Stone Age? They shouldn’t have a nuclear bomb. And so, my wife’s feelings didn’t get in the way of forming that opinion. At the very least, the orange madman is impulsive, vindictive and unwilling to listen to people with wisdom and experience. When I later recalled the moment, she said the preacher had said ‘Antichrist’ rather than ‘Satan.’

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to fall into the category of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Pol Pot from Cambodia murdered a quarter of the Cambodians. Had he run Russia or China, he might have outdone Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Still, we shouldn’t be too sure. Trump is a savage constrained by the United States’ political and judicial institutions. Had he free rein, things would probably have been much worse. And as far as the supposed qualities of the Antichrist go, few people qualify for all of them. Still, his lambasting of the pope’s peace efforts, while portraying himself as Jesus, and the religious display of Donald Trump and his circle of evil in the Oval Office, give him a great shot at the title of Antichrist. Is pride not the gravest sin, and is MAGA not all about pride? Not to mention money and patriotism, the likely reasons for Judas betraying Jesus. And what to think of all the hatred, while Christianity is about love. MAGA is the opposite of what Christianity stands for.

It shows that American conservatives are willing to let Satan run their country. Trump being a jerk is why people voted for him. It is natural human behaviour. When order falls apart, we revert to gangsterism and choose gangsters as our leaders. There might have been no second Trump term had there been no immigration surge during Biden’s tenure. It became the issue that decided the election. The Democrats let Biden run for a second term, and when that fell apart, let Harris, who was part of Biden’s government, take over.

Cultural differences divide us, but none of today’s cultures is fit for the future. The outcome of all we do is a total disaster. We should define how we should live and seek those willing to go along with it. And because we will never agree, we need a messiah to tell us. We will have to separate the good people from the bad people. We must try to rehabilitate troublemakers, if necessary, in prison labour camps. It would be the end of human rights as we know it. And we cannot accept alternative myths because people fight and murder over them, so everyone needs to accept the same fairy tales. That is a great leap for a former liberal, but I need to think ahead. If I am indeed the messiah, I should aim to have a plan that works for the coming 1,000 years. I can’t foresee what will happen, but there is a script, so God is in full control, so that worrying is pointless.

Humans are a failed species. Christians would say that we are sinners, not worthy of God’s grace and in dire need of a saviour. Order can only come from the top down, and by force. I might be the only one who can guide humanity to the future, not because I am a genius, but because it is the script of the story. And so, it will be a role I play, nothing more. It is up to you to do miracles. If you don’t get it, you are a moron. And you are either on my side or on the side of the morons. And we need a holy war against the morons.

On 15 May 2025, exactly 8647 days after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, former FBI director James Comey posted a photo of seashells on social media spelling ‘8647’, a code for removing Trump from office. That generated some media attention and drew the ire of the Trump administration after the MAGA movement had previously sold hats with ‘8646’ on them, calling for Biden’s removal from office. There is no evidence that Comey aimed to create that 8647-day interval, but it could be. Yet the incident is also part of the 11 September 2001 coincidence scheme, which is beyond the capabilities of human conspirators to organise. My home was formerly owned by the Tromp family, which is the Dutch equivalent of Trump, so that is quite odd given the situation at hand. The meaning of the name is ‘trumpeter,’ and according to prophecies, trumpets would herald the end times. Removing Trump from office and me taking his place could be part of God’s plan for the End Times. That is by no means certain, but it is a cryptic message that you can see in these coincidences. And until it is disproven, it is something to consider.

Donald Trump should face trial in The Hague, Netherlands. The United States can’t give him a fair trial. Liberals may want to hang him, while conservatives might want to give him a pass. Whether trying to overthrow a legitimate election result constitutes treason may remain a matter of contention between liberals and conservatives, but that Donald Trump and his pal Bibi Netanyahu have violated international law and committed crimes against humanity by starting the Iran war cannot be in doubt. The ultimate expert on murders committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law, Vladimir Putin, called the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei a murder committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law.

How to bring the orange madman down? That hadn’t been on my mind, but in April 2025, I dreamed of being part of a crowd in The Hague during the NATO summit scheduled for that summer. The leaders of the NATO member states were all there. When Trump passed by in his car, I began to scold him in Dutch, ‘Hij is een hondenlul (He is a dog dick).’ It is an offensive slur that soccer fans sing when disagreeing with the referee’s decision. There was absolute silence. Bystanders were shocked, making me fear that the police would round me up. But then the crowd joined in, and the singing grew louder until it became a thundering chant. It made the news worldwide. From then on, no one called him President Trump anymore. Everyone called him dog dick. I don’t know the future, but I have to work with assumptions. Play time is over. Adults should run the world. As Adam reincarnate, I am 6,000 years old. There may be no one else left to save you.

Latest revision: 5 May 2026

Featured image: AI-generated

1. One in four Americans think Obama may be the Antichrist, survey says. The Guardian (2013).
2. The Corruption Chronicles: Donald Trump’s profiteering from public service, by the numbers. Kei Chin, Michael Beckel, and Oliver Ni (2025). Issue One.
3. The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump’s presidency. Nick Marsh (2026). BBC.
4. The 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Eliza Relman and Azmi Haroun (2017). Business Insider.